Things Both Near and Far
by Antigone.Rose
Summary: In Which Rose grows up, lives a life and becomes, for a few moments, important. A look at Rose and the Bad Wolf throughout time.


_A/N: Yeah, I know it's been years since Journey's End at this point. I don't have to let goooo!_

_Disc.: Not in the slightest_

* * *

><p><strong>"All things by immortal power,<strong>  
><strong>Near and Far<strong>  
><strong>Hiddenly<strong>  
><strong>To each other linked are,<strong>  
><strong>That thou canst not stir a flower<strong>  
><strong>Without troubling of a star."<strong>

**-Francis Thompson**

* * *

><p>Before she met him, the blood of the wolf ran through her veins. Before he said the word "run!", shadowy forces were already at work, pulling her in a hundred different directions at once. Before everything and everyone, before the Doctor and the Time Lords, before the universe, She created herself.<p>

All for her Doctor. All to keep him safe, to keep them together, just for a few moments longer.

She is splitting at the seams because she is so full of life. She _is_ life. The mother of stars, the eulogy singer of worlds. No one knows the glow of forever that lies behind her eyes. Not even the Time Lords, not even the Doctor. Because someday, some black day when the universe will still for just a moment and the sky will blaze with fire, he will die.

She will live forever.

She creates the Girl because the Girl is part of herself. She pulls dust from the brightest stars, fire from the hottest suns and she creates Her. Outside, she is pink and yellow and average, if just the tiniest bit beautiful. But inside, inside she is golden. She glows. She hold her creator and her creation inside herself and then sends it out into the stars, knowing that she will come to being when the time is right.

And then She waits. She watches as the universe grows older. She follows the Doctor when she can, but he has not truly been born yet, not her Doctor. Not the one that she was made for, the one who explodes into being in a baptism of fire. She knows that she could claw her way forward through time if She wanted. Time warps around her form. But, She waits. She waits until time loses meaning and then..it happens.

Rose Marion Tyler is born to an ordinary mother and father. She is tiny, but she is pink and yellow and the Being who has waited so long for this moment rejoices. She becomes one with the Girl she has created and the Girl becomes one with her. They are fused, now and forever. For the first time, She can feel her heart beating, feel the breath being pulled through her lungs. She wants to make herself known to the Girl, the Rose, that she has created, but she knows that now is not the time.

She retreats into the furthest reaches of herself and tries to let the little mind that she has touched and created grow as any normal mind would. The Girl called Rose grows and develops and She is happy. Rose is bright and exciting and engaged and so full of life. When she is very young, she will sometimes stare at the horizon for a few moments too long or her gaze will fix on the stars and not waver.

Her mother sees these episodes and she asks her daughter. "Rose, love, what are you looking at?"

She won't answer for a long time, but when she does her answer it always the same. "It's big out there."

He mother never knows what to say.

But, time passes like it always does and Rose grows out of these odd spells. She is a normal girl in every way. She giggles with her friends and flirts with boys. Sometimes, though, she feels a strange longing for something she cannot define. She will lie in bed at night, itching with anxiety at not knowing what it is. But, during the day, she is bright and happy. She beings to peroxide her hair at seventeen and soon she catches the attention of a boy.

His name is Jimmy Stones and he promises to take her places. She believes him because she has never been hurt before. She forgets her ambitions and promises to follow him until the end of time. Inside her, far from the surface, something lets out a howl of rage. But, Rose Tyler is at a disconnect with the part of herself that is as old as time. She doesn't hear the warning shout and she forgets that she once stared longingly at the stars.

Jimmy Stones treats her as well as she expects to be treated and, if he cheats sometimes, he always comes back. And she is always there waiting for him. Just after her eighteenth birthday, he asks her to marry him. Desperate to hold onto him, she agrees. But, the cheating continues and Rose is ready to break. She already wants to leave him when he brings home a leggy redheaded girl and tells Rose that he's calling their engagement off. She returns the ring in silence and leaves, tears spilling down her face.

She goes home. She has left her ambitions in the past and the days pass in a uniform progression of smog, work and chips. Soon, she is just another face in a sea of them. Their expressions are all the same. Blank.

She has a friend, Mickey, and he is nice to her. Their relationship moves from friendship to something more without a real thought on Rose's part. And he's nice to her and would never think of cheating on her so, slowly, she begins to like him. Being with Mickey is nice. It's easy. As simple as breathing.

But, the days being to mash together and she is bored again. And, a few months after she turns nineteen, the sense of anticipation that haunted her in her early teens comes back. She is waiting for something…what she doesn't know. But, she begins to look up at the stars once again and slowly, oh so slowly, she begins to wonder. Inside her, the bit of her that is as old as time creeps out of hiding just a little. They are ready. She is ready.

* * *

><p>The word run triggers it all. It tugs at her ears and she hold hands with a stranger and lets him pull her along through a basement and out into a world that she does not know. A world that is filled with darkness and danger and so many impossible things. He asks her to come with him.<p>

She wants to say yes. But, inside her heart, she can still hear Jimmy Stones telling her that she'll never amount to anything, can hear all of her teachers telling her that she's not clever enough. She looks at Mickey. He's nice to her. No one else, not even her mother, is that nice to her. He's her crutch. She can't let him go. She tells the Doctor, the strange man with death by his side and forever in his eyes, no.

Inside her, the being who both created and was created by her, begins to panic. And her panic, so explosive, seeps through to Rose. How could he leave? He should have waited? He was her forever and ever and ever and ever… Her mind begins to ramble down trails that she doesn't understand and her head behind to pound.

But, then he comes back and he asks twice. The panic abates and, deep inside, something gives Rose a push forward. Some force whispers the word "run" in her ear. And, though she has been battered and beaten down and throughly convinced that she will amount to nothing, she listens. And she runs, without even looking back.

And she never stops.

She begins to learn about the man that they call the Doctor. She learns that he is wounded, that he is brave, that he is selfless and that he is kind. She learns that she is not a man at all, but an alien, a wander, a man without a home. In a part of her mind that goes largely unnoticed, She learns that he is the most beautiful thing that She had ever seen. He is her other half, the one She created herself for. She is his avenging angel and he is her lonely god.

Their time together begins to fly past, faster and faster, some insane dance of possibility and impossibility. They are just beginning, they fumble and trip as they make their way through the stars. But…

"Perhaps a man only enjoys trouble when there's nothing left…"

"Bad Wolf."

"The things you've seen…the Darkness…"

"Bad Wolf."

"I could save the world, but lose you…"

"Bad wolf."

"It's volcano day. Do what you have to."

"Bad wolf."

"Everybody lives, Rose!"

"Bad wolf."

"The world doesn't end if the Doctor dances…"

"Bad wolf."

"I'm coming to get you."

"Bad wolf!"

"Have a fantastic life."

The words run through her veins like fire. She feels them pounding in her mind and somewhere, somewhere in the furthest reaches, a force that has long been nameless had found her title. Bad Wolf, Bad Wolf, Bad Wolf, Bad Wolf…She howls. Anger and terror run through Rose Tyler and the Bad Wolf pushes her forward, showing her what to do.

When the Doctor sends her home, that's the final straw. Rose Tyler screams in frustration and knows without a doubt what to do. She opens the heart of the TARDIS and the Bad Wolf feels her own birth take place. Power imbues every atom of Rose Tyler and, howling with joy, the Bad Wolf makes herself known, at last, to her more human side. Rose welcomes her in. They are one.

And, at that moment, She is the avenging angel, She is the goddess of all Time. She is so much more than a shop girl, so much more than loose atoms in the air. She is the Everything, the one who parts the ways. For a moment, it is the most wonderful thing she has ever experienced. She scatters the daleks with a flick of her wrist and brings Jack back to from the dead, filling him with life.

But then, Rose Tyler starts to scream. Inside, the power they have borrowed from the TARDIS is becoming too much. She is burning, burning, burning and, no matter how much it hurts, there is a part of it that is beautiful. Rose weeps and the Bad Wolf howls. Together, they are more than something…but they are falling apart. Time ticks by, too fast and too slow all at once.

The Bad Wolf feels herself spiraling…down, down, down…further and further from control. It is terrifying and exhilarating at once. She burns and Rose Tyler burns with her. Together, they begin to cry and panic and the Bad Wolf retreats, knowing that this is something that Rose must face alone. But, first, she wipes the traces of herself from the girl's mind.

She holds back, the Bad Wolf watching and waiting as Rose burns closer and closer to nothingness, to ashes, to dust. Everything is fading into a lot of golden light and a high, keening wail…

* * *

><p>Blink.<p>

Rose is awake. The wolf retreats and lets the girl take control again.

Blink.

Rose can feel her, just barely, hanging on to the very edge of her soul. But, she does not wonder because the Doctor is back and her mind is filled with singing and golden light…

Blink.

Then, the world explodes, tipping on its side as the Doctor she had always known disappears. The Bad Wolf knew that this was coming, but, then again, she knows everything. And this, this new new Doctor and the new new adventures they will have, are the beginning of the end.

The Bad Wolf nudges Rose in the right direction, helping to show her that, at heart, this is still the man she knew, still the lonely god she would die for. Soon after they have arrived back in London, they are off again. Back to the stars and back to danger. They begin their impossible dance again, more practiced now, moving in an almost-perfect rhythm.

"You burnt like the sun."

Rose hears the words and thinks of wolves. The Doctor distracts her and pulls her away before she has time to think on it all that much. But, in the darkness of her bedroom late that night, she whispers words she half-remembers and knows that they still hold power. The game has been played, the song sung, but there is still a greater force at work, something still pulling her in too many directions at once.

"Bad Wolf." She says.

Inside her, something stirs and she hears faint singing, sees golden light through a veil. It's big out there, she thinks. But, like always, she puts it out of mind. There is something there, some indefinable instinct telling her to turn back, to shut her eyes, to put it out of mind. The Bad Wolf hides in the darkness where she will not go. Rose is not made of dark-colored things. Once pink and yellow, now the golden child, she still burns.

Still, she runs along with her Doctor and she loves him more than she has ever loved anyone before. He holds her hand and she hold his and it is so much better with two. And all the while, dark-colored clouds are gathering.

Rose doesn't see them. She is not made of dark-colored things. The wolf does. She braces herself for the storm that hangs heavily on the horizon.

The words Torchwood and Valient Child twist around her ears, rumble through the universe like thunder, and the future looms closer. In a sweep of the pendulum, she will be gone.

"The Vailent Child will die in battle."

There is truth hidden in the words no science can deny. Rose has never been one for prophecy. But, there are too many words she can't remember saying still sounding in her mind. She cannot bring herself to dismiss it that easily. She can feel the power behind the words singing through the air like lightning. Because, she is still the one who parts the ways. Words threaded through time with her own fingers tease her mind.

She is the Bad Wolf even if she has no real claim to the title. Time is still linear. It no longer bends at her will and, though she cannot truly remember it, she knows that it once did.

What is is what was and what was never truly could be. Half the time, Rose Tyler does not hear or acknowledge the arguments going round and around her own mind. They're only words. Unless, of course, they're true. The Bad Wolf sees what is coming and wishes it was not.

And then Rose Tyler's time in the land of mystery and shadow is through. The Doctor is gone from her life and she is alone in a world that is not her own. The Bad Wolf howls as Rose cries and there is no going back. Bad Wolf, Bad Wolf, Bad Wolf. A fate worse than death is what she has assigned herself. Time is linear, though at the moment it doesn't seem so. She's been dragged back to before, away from the new new person she has become and back to the shopgirl she swore never to be again.

Bad Wolf Bay. It is a cruel irony, but a welcome reminder all at once. Rose left the path, laid out the worlds. A trail of words and voices, nonsense and coincidences. Even here, in a world that is not her home, the words have managed to follow her. Bad Wolf. Once it was hope. Now it is distant and half-remembered dream.

When the Doctor arrives, the words are hard and painful. It isn't his fault, she knows. She doesn't blame him, can't blame him. She worries about him all on his own. She mourns the life that they never had, never _could_ have had.

She is a shopgirl who knows what was, what is and what could be. She still sees the day and the night, the sun and the moon and _knows_ why they hurt. She feels the earth move beneath her feet. The words to say so are just out of reach. Sometimes, she thinks that English is a useless language for the thoughts that run through her head.

She looks at him, her lonely angel, her oncoming storm, her Doctor, and tries to say what she can't.

"I love you." She tells him and its not enough.

It could _never_ be enough. He is the man who showed her that it was big out there, who would stop time for her, if only he could. She is the girl who has destroyed herself to save him, the one who created herself inside her own mind. They were a paradox, impossible and perfect at the same time.

He is forever and, yet, he is not.

She is fleeting and, yet, forever.

Her heart belongs to him in this moment, just like it will for the rest of all time. And, though he does not say, he will never love another like he loved her. It was impossible and perfect, alien and familiar, fleeting and forever. The Bad Wolf watches and mourns and knows. Burning, burning into nothingness. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust and time to time.

It's big out there. This beach is far too small.

He's gone without a goodbye, the Time Lord who is forever running out of it. Rose cries, helpless and hopeless, and the Bad Wolf does too. He is gone and so they are gone too, stuck in a world that is not theirs. Nothing is the same, not the moon, not the sun, not even the sky.

* * *

><p>"She is returning." Across time, the words ring out and the wolf pricks her ears. Rose, trapped beneath unfamiliar stars, begins to feel a tight, uncertain feeling gathering in her chest. She does not notice at first when the stars wink and fade. This is not her sky. These are not her stars.<p>

But they are fading. Torchwood suspects it and experts confirm it. The sky is going black, turning to inky velvet, unmarred by twinkling lights. And still, Rose does not understand.

"She is returning." Voices whisper through time.

Rose shakes her head and blinks, pretending she doesn't hear them. She wanders through the halls of Tyler Manor and no one will meet her eyes. She wanders through Torchwood and, on the rare occasion that someone will look up, there is nothing in their eyes but fear. She is the wolf at their door, the thing they cannot understand. For a while, Rose tries hating the lot of them as much as they seem to hate her. But, it makes her feel empty and cold and altogether inhuman, so she gives it up. Instead, she lives on the fringes of their society, not quite belonging anywhere.

Somedays, she imagines she slipped into the void after all and is now wandering like a phantom among the living. Not quite dead, but definitely not alive. She lives on the edge of it all and imagines herself the loneliest girl in the entire world. Inside, the Bad Wolf pities the girl, but does little. Rose is strong. She may wilt, but she will never die.

Still, the stars continue to fade and flicker out. People are beginning to notice. The world is afraid. With her own intuition and some prodding from the wolf inside her mind, Rose begins to work with the Torchwood authorities that she had, up until that point, ignored. Few people are worth listening to after you have known the Doctor. Even fewer after you have been an omnipotent goddess of all time. It is a time that she both does and does not remember. It burns bright in her mind, but sears her if she looks at it too closely.

Between Rose's instincts and Torchwood's intelligence, they have created a contraption the Doctor himself would be proud of. The Dimension Cannon is ready as the stars continue to fade from the sky. Rose is ready. There is dissent and arguing, people still do not trust her. Some days, Rose thinks that they must see her for what she really is.

It is something that she doesn't know herself.

"She is returning."

But voices are calling, urging her on. She listens now, even if she can't explain. She fights them fiercely and, eventually, they agree. No one else really wanted to go anyway. Half the scientists think the machine will kill her, the other half have no idea if they can get her back. She finds herself beyond caring. He is hers and she is his and if there is a chance to get back, she must take it. Her and him, together as they should be. It is the principle she has built her survival, her life, around.

So, as they strap her in and tell her that it will hurt and that she may die, she isn't afraid. It is as if she is burning once again. But this time, Rose alone is in control. She feels the day and the night and sun and moon and it hurts, just like it always has. The wolf returns to her cave, lets Rose wield the power as she sees fit. Burning, she thinks, because there is no better way to explain it.

And then, the world burns with her and she is pushed way from this world where she does not belong.

The first few times, nothing makes much sense. There is color…sound…light…heat…and an ungodly amount of running. But, beyond that, Rose does not recall much. The wolf helps her on when her strength flags, moves her feet when she is on the brink of breaking. Bit by bit, things become clearer. Rose sees faces, hears voices, remembers who she is and why she is here. Burning. She looks for her Doctor.

As she passes through dimensions, few things stand out. For the most part, humanity remains the same. She remembers snippets here and there, things that she see and then stores in her mind. A beautiful boy with an angular face and wide blue eyes. A redheaded girl with a sad, expectant smile. An old woman who stares at her unblinkingly. All these and thousands more pass, but no Doctor.

Sometimes, she searches. She contacts whatever authority she can, the government, Torchwood, UNIT, what have you. Other times, she moves on, just knowing that the Doctor is not here in the place where she has landed. There are some dimensions she sees that she knows she will never speak of. An island of black tar in a sea of flames. A quiet forest full of corpses. Places that are horrifying in their emptiness. She moves on.

Then, when she has nearly given up all hope, she lands on a dimension that almost, _almost_, seems familiar. She sees a group of people gathering, but before she can go forward, she is cut off by a woman with a determined expression and wild red hair. The woman babbles at her and there is something in her, something familiar and alien all at once. Rose tries to identify it and can't, fading out once more.

Days pass. She looks for the Doctor. Instead, she sees the redhead again, brassy and bold and so different now. She looks for the Doctor, doesn't see him. She looks at the woman, this Donna Noble and bites back a sigh. She went looking for her Doctor and found a brassy redhead named Donna instead. Rose fights off the disappointment and almost slips back into the void, but something about the woman is still familiar. The Bad Wolf urges her on and she stays, looking at the woman, at Donna.

"There's something on your back." She echoes faintly, and misses times when things made sense.

She speaks in a made-up sort of language now, combining terms she's heard the Doctor and Torchwood use. She contacts UNIT, takes control and finds the TARDIS. So close…but so much further. She does what she can, somehow sensing that Donna Noble is important. Important as Rose herself once was. Burning. The sensation that she cannot truly remember nor forget. Donna knows it too.

Rose is grasping at half-formed thoughts and running in and out if this world, but something is changing. She can almost feel him through the veil, her Doctor, closer than ever. But, there is still a prophecy on her head and dread in her heart. She is still the Bad Wolf, the half-formed goddess of light and shadow, and Donna Noble still has something on her back. Rose blinks away tears still unshed and prepares for the end.

As Donna lays dying on the asphalt, Rose leans forward, feeling a sort of kinship with the woman that she has felt with no one else, ever. Burning, the both of them. Ready to give up everything for the Doctor. So, as Donna inches further and further away from Rose and closer and closer toward home, there are only two words in Rose's mind. Not "I'm sorry" or "It's okay." No words of comfort for the dying.

"Bad Wolf." She whispers as she fades away with the world that never should have been.

What seems to be mere moments later, they have found each other and then been ripped apart again. Rose is splitting at the seams. She came so far, burnt her life into ashes as she went. Never did she think she would have to go back. But, he tricks death and she has never been happier, or sadder. This is their last adventure. The final stand. Whatever happens after will leave them, all of them, Rose, the bad wolf, the Doctor, Donna, all his companions, different than before.

"One will die." Dalek Caan's words hang over her head like fog on a cool morning.

Rose Tyler knows things. She knows the sun and the moon and why they hurt. That the earth moves under her feet. That running is usually the best defense. That it's big out there. That time is linear, no matter how much she wishes otherwise. And most of all, she knows that these words have been spoken about her before. She closes her eyes, shakes her head and carries on. Inside, the Wolf begins to burn, if ever so slightly.

It's over as abruptly as it began. Standing on a beach in a world that is not and could never be her home. The Wolf is howling and Rose is burning, but it is different this time around. Behind her, life is nothing but ashes and bits of sparkly broken glass. Ahead, it is as empty as the beach they're standing on. Rose has cast herself in this role. She is the Bad Wolf, after all. Time once bent for her. Only her. Only once. What was is gone. What is hurts to look at. And what could be…it burns her throat and makes her head pound.

Their last adventure together is through. Their last fight has been fought. Their last song, sung. Life isn't fair. If it was, Rose wouldn't be here. She would have never left him at all. She wants to tell him, to scream and rage and clutch the front of his stupid pinstripe suit and beg him not to leave. For once, she wants to act like the girl she is, barely 22, with the weight of two worlds pressing down on her.

But, she can't. She's paralyzed as he offers her a stranger as a consolation prize. He acts as if a gift of a man with his face could fix her. Stop her from being cut off from the vastness of the universe. He leaves before she has time to say no. She looks up and the Bad Wolf looks up with her. This is not their sky. These are not their stars. And as for the man standing beside them…this is not their Doctor.

It's big out there. Rose always knew. This beach, this man, this _life_, they are all too small.

But, it is what she has left herself with. They are standing at Bad Wolf Bay after all. And who is she if not the Bad Wolf? The parter of the ways was always her. She collapses on the hard-packed sand and begins to weep, begins to burn, begins to understand. The best of her life is behind her. She is gone from her Doctor, her home and her stars. She is gone from herself. And this time, there will be no going back.

* * *

><p>The blood of the wolf still runs through her veins, as it always will. She is still being pulled by a thousand more things she cannot see. Voices throughout time will speak of Rose Tyler, of the golden child, the burning one. Yet, she will stay here. On this beach, in this world, with this man. All for her Doctor. Always for her Doctor.<p>

She has sacrificed all that she is, all that she was, all that she ever could be. Beneath her, the earth moves. Above, the stars shine, cold and unfamiliar. Not hers. But, the wolf whispers words of comfort in her ear and she listens. These stars, not hers, hold a hundred more mysteries to be solved.

Beside her stands the man who is not quite the Doctor. He smiles at her and it is so _familiar _in this strange world that she has to smile back. They could be more than something, she thinks. Him and her. Her and him. She somewhat likes the thought. He grabs her hand and she does not pull away. It may not be the life she wanted, she thinks, but it is a life.

Above, the stars glitter coldly. Not hers. But, someday, they could be. She knows it. But, then again, she knows everything. Rose and the Bad Wolf are slowly becoming, slowly belonging. One night, she stands outside the house she shares with the man who is almost her Doctor. He joins her and looks up at the stars. "Someday." He promises and she believes him.

She looks up, does not speak, but knows. It's big out there.


End file.
